Living Free and Clear in My Own Home on the Cloud: Rick Moranis

Please join me in celebration as I formally announce the
sale of my apartment, the disconnection of my land line and
cable subscriptions, and the liquidation, placement and donation
of all my worldly goods in preparation for my joyful move to my
new home in the Cloud.

Many of you have long suspected I was in a transitional
state -- the radical weight loss, the tardy, strategic return of
phone messages, the auctioning of my Eskimo art. But only a few
of you knew I had been working toward my goal of personally
becoming vapor and joining, in the Cloud, with my vast musical
collection; my broad assortment of e-books; my timeless,
sentimentally digitized photographs; my critical, up-to-date
medical records; my proudly maintained archives; and the last
six years of scanned tax returns and backups. (Francis,
apologies, dear. I wound up giving the mauve and green Fulper
vase to Emeralda in gratitude for 26 devoted, dust-free years of
not breaking it. Her Wednesdays are now open in case you know
anyone.)

Oh, I’ve been weekending and summering in the Cloud for
years. First the weekends got a bit longer, until, well it’s all
a bit foggy now, but this final, complete relocation should be
almost seamless. All of my banking, bill-paying, pharmaceutical
and grocery lists are already in the Cloud. Heck, I’ve even been
dating in the Cloud for longer than I can remember, though I
haven’t actually met anyone FTF. LOL, isn’t that crazy? (BTW,
the humidity -- my skin has never been better; my hair is
another story!)

That, coupled with the nutty price of fossil fuels and the
disparity between the real-time traffic alerts I’ve been getting
on my satellite nav and the (can you believe I actually still
listen to) AM radio traffic reports, meant it was time to put
the old cavity-backs on EBay, along with my beloved hunk of
bored-out, 340-HP, octane-sucking American muscle. Goodbye,
alternate side of the street parking. Goodbye, car alarms, road
rage, teens who text while driving, and poop on the sidewalk.

In the Cloud there are no real pets, so there’s absolutely
no need for paper. History has always just happened and is open
to everyone for rewriting and/or attribution. There is no
infringement because there can’t really be any copyrights. It’s
so great! And there are no jackhammers that can’t be muted, no
context that can’t be altered, no preservatives and no
expiration dates.

In the Cloud one needs no attic, basement, locker or
luggage. Leftovers don’t congeal. Nothing ever spoils. There is
no global warming because it’s always so wonderfully Cloudy.
There is unlimited capacity for everything. I almost never get
aggravated because I’m always aggregating. And nothing is ever
dirty because everything is dirty. There is no pollution because
everything is garbage. There is no pornography because
everything already is. Oh, how I love my new big, soft, ever-
expanding Cloud!

A few of you have already asked me some important questions.
Will I ever return? For a visit, a Cub Scout reunion, a dental
cleaning? What if I change my mind or someone moves into the
Cloud next to me and cooks Indian food all the time? And of
course, where exactly will I sleep?

Let me answer all of these by simply saying that I adore
Indian food. I find that, though clarified butter congeals, I
never seem to have leftovers. In terms of actual human contact,
I’ll be watching, and therefore already knowing, everything --
all while dutifully flossing.

As for sleep, as easy as it would be for me to Google an
appropriate quotation to copy and paste into an original,
literary, intellectual articulation of my own feelings about the
necessity of planning for such a triviality, let me remind all
of you of what the few fine country music fans among you already
know: It’s five o’clock somewhere. Which means I’ll be free at
last to never again miss a news cycle, to trade global
commodities 24/7 and to blog, tweet, tumbl, gwak, grp and greps
wherever and whenever I so please.

And if anyone doesn’t like it, they can get off of my Cloud.

(Rick Moranis is a writer and actor who lives in New York
City. The opinions expressed are his own.)